Web Analytics for the Win!
When I first started this blog I had the blog on a sub-domain of the main domain: blog.endlesslycurious.com and at the actual index page of www.endlesslycurious.com I had a splash screen, which was an image of a Wordle word cloud I had generated using the dictionary definitions of ‘endlessly and ‘curious’. I can’t remember why I decided to use a splash screen, I think it was just that I thought word clouds were that smart looking. I used this set-up as I prefer having each of the main modules of a site assigned their own sub-domains as it makes it easy for me to remember the URL. I have always thought that sub-domains e.g. blog.endlesslycurious.com look nicer than www.endlesslycurious.com/blog/ for signifying a different section of a site. The following is the original splash screen that used to greet anyone who went directly to domain index.
At the start of 2009 I decided to remove the splash screen and move the blog off of it’s sub-domain and into the main domain root. I mostly did this based on the information I was seeing in Google Analytics: which was telling me that my current site had a bounce rate between 75-99%. The bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave the site after viewing only a single page: they bounce off the content/pages without viewing more. Such a high bounce rate I discovered was cause for concern as it meant visitors were seeing the splash screen and deciding to leave the site without viewing anything more. Google Analytics also highlighted the main culprit which was my splash screen: so it had to go!
Since the start of 2009 I have had my blog as the index for the domain (see above image), since implementing this I have noticed a fairly dramatic decrease in my average bounce rate. This is one of the many reason why I would recommend Google Analytics to anyone developing their own site as its free to use and has many useful and powerful tools to help analyse and investigate how users experience and find your site. The following is a graph from the Google Analytics showing my bounce rate from mid November 2008 to mid January 2009, you can quite clearly see where I removed the splash screen at the start of January.
The removal of the splash screen has improved the bounce rate considerably, this indicates a fairly dramatic improvement in user experience. As now users are deciding to stick around to read more content than a single page before leaving. The more I use Google Analytics the more I am impressed with the quantity of measurements and the quality of the application itself: it is very easy to use and manages to present complex information in an easy to understand manner. After further investigation I have discovered that Web Analytics is a fairly big thing ™, with many interesting analytics blogs and books providing more information and insight.
I have also developed some ideas for a new layout for this site and a new sidebar and I think I may test drive the experimentation options the Google Website Optimatiser provides for testing alternate site layouts simultaniousally and collecting usage information for each variation. It had been several years since I last ran a website when I started this current blog, so I am still catching up with how far free site analyse tools have come in terms of features, ease of use and quality. So far I am very impressed with the services I have tried: especially with Google’s offerings.
